Peekvid up … sort of; and Oscar torrents

Peekvid has returned from the dead, with a new look, a ‘please don’t sue us’ statement, and a site that will not load at least 50% of the time.

The site looks great.

“Peekvid does not contain any content on its site, but is merely an index of available links on the Internet. Peekvid is committed to an industry solution that will provide a mechanism to compensate artists that create the work you enjoy watching. Peekvid would like to be part of the long term solution.”

Hmm, yes.

You have to laugh. Whilst the site looks great, and the statement is unlikely to get them very far, you would have though that considering none of the content is hosted by Peekvid, that they would have have enough server capacity to cope with visits to the site, but apparently not. Even if you wanted to you really have no chance of actually viewing any content on it (via it). You have about as much chance of getting Yahoo’s Pipes site to work (I will comment on Pipes in a few weeks after it become possible to visit the site and have a chance of it not crashing/timing out).

Continuing a theme, the Oscars are near and a very brazen Oscar Torrents Site form the Pirate Bay team. Calling it ‘The future of the Oscars, today.’Oscar Torrents, encourages visitors to download the torrent of the nominated film and then vote in all the categories. It is a brilliantly put together site – if you ignore the rather obvious copyright issues – issues the site is only too keen to address:

“To those worried about downloading in case they get sued: by our calculations, your chances of getting nailed are way less than your chances of winning the lottery. Don’t think twice about it.

To all intellectual property landlords: we are aware that OscarTorrents might annoy you — but contain your righteous indignation for a while, and think: we’re only linking to torrents that already exist. Face it: your membrane has burst, and it wasn’t us who burst it. Your precious bodily fluids are escaping.

You haven’t beaten us, so why not join us? Think of a new business model that doesn’t involve overpriced pieces of plastic and skanky cinemas hawking cheap carbohydrates while relying on $6/hr projectionists who can’t keep a film in focus — not to mention insulting your audiences by (to pick a few examples) surveilling us with nightvision glasses, searching bags, 30 minutes of commercials and bombarding us with ridiculous anti-piracy propaganda. Take a look at yourselves. Is it really any wonder we’re winning?”